Learning to think, talk and act like an engineer

Yara and Eli put wheels on their basket car as part of the Engineering Club at Heritage Heights Elementary School. In addition to teaching the third-graders about engineering, it helps them with their literacy skills.

Literacy and engineering come together at UB to help third-graders learn the engineering design process

“People might wonder why literacy researchers would be interested in studying an Engineering Club. But recent standards movements ... focus on literacy skills across all content areas. Each discipline, like engineering, has its own set of disciplinary literacies.”

Mary McVee, director, CLaRI

University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Welcome to the Engineering Club at Sweet
Home School District’s Heritage Heights Elementary. Joey and
Anton are eager third-graders working on how they can attach the
back wheels (CDs) to an axle (pencil) to a car body (foam core
board) that will be powered by a rubber band.

“It’s hard Joey, very hard,” says Anton.

“But if we two work together …” answers
Joey.

“It’s not gonna be too hard,” says Anton,
“’Cause we two have great ideas.”

The boys are part of an after-school club sponsored by the
University at Buffalo’s CLaRI (Center for Literacy and
Reading Instruction) and NYSCEDII (The New York State Center for
Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation), along with support
from the Graduate School of Education and School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences at UB.

Twice a week, 22 third-graders stay an hour after school to
learn about engineering and the engineering design process.
The enthusiastic third-graders do not just focus on engineering.
They are also learning how to talk and interact like engineers,
honing their literacy skills, especially language, to work
collaboratively.

“People might wonder why literacy researchers would be
interested in studying an Engineering Club,” says Mary McVee,
director of CLaRI and principal investigator on a study exploring
literacy and engineering. “But recent standards movements
like Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards focus on
literacy skills across all content areas. Each discipline,
like engineering, has its own set of disciplinary
literacies.”

This spirit of collaboration and communication is palpable on
club days.

The daily tasks revolve around engineering. But the underlying
literacy principles are what CLaRI is all about. Students work with
peers to solve intricate real life engineering problems, using
inquiry skills, a process the surrounding adults say leaves the
kids wanting more.

Student projects include a balsa wood and Popsicle stick bridge,
and another that constructs a landing protection system made of
balloons and modeled after the Mars Rover. Children are now
familiar with several types of engineering, such as civil and
aeronautical engineering. Excited parents have told Zlotek their
children go home sharing everything they do in club and talking
enthusiastically about what they are learning.

There are ties between engineering design and art design in
elementary settings, says Tracy Langlotz, an art teacher involved
in the project. When she introduces Heritage Heights Elementary
students to a new project Langlotz helps children explore materials
and think about what each different art material can contribute to
a finished project.

Langlotz follows a similar procedure whenever introducing a
project in the engineering club. First, the students gather around
the materials table to explore the different substances. Because
some of the children are English Language Learners not yet
proficient in English, students first learn the names for everyday
objects.

“What do we call this?” Langlotz asks, holding up a
thumb tack. As she guides children through explorations of the
properties of the different materials, she models the types of
questions engineers might ask themselves.

“Does this bend?” she asks. “How strong is
this?”

Today’s club begins with a video of a rubber-band-powered
car in action. Cheryl Aldrich, Sweet Home’s Instructional
Support Specialist for Science Education, helps her students think
through some problems they encountered during the previous club
meeting with designing their own cars.

Some of them had struggled with materials, so Patrick Rexford, a
four-grade classroom teacher at Heritage Heights, made a model car
out of a basket, pencils, a curler, a binder clip and four wooden
wheels.

“What do engineers do if the first materials they have
chosen aren’t working?” asks Aldrich, while Rexford
demonstrates his model for the students.

Then Rexford and Aldrich lead the children through a discussion
of what kids can think about when changing their design. Part of
the engineering design process, the teachers tell them, means
learning about planning, creating, testing and improving.

The kids zip off to six round tables in the library media
center. They hunch over their cars, all of which have bodies
made of plastic baskets or foam core board. Some cars have wooden
wheels, and some have wheels made from old CDs.

“What do you think about your design?” the teachers
and UB faculty and graduate students ask them, stressing the
literacy skills central to CLaRI’s mission. “What needs
to be improved?”

As they work on their cars, pairs of students leave the library
to go outside into the hallway where they test their cars.

“Why do you think it goes better when it’s upside
down?” asks one teacher, prompting the boys to consider the
possibilities. After testing the car, the kids return to the
library to improve their model. They decide to change the
rubber band, then go to the materials station at the front of the
room to choose one. Soon, they have the new rubber band –
this one thicker and bigger – install it, and go to the
hallway to test again.

Watching the boys work as a team, Ken English, deputy director
of NYSCEDII, is impressed with their collaboration. Many
engineering companies and industry partners, he says, emphasize the
need for workers who not only have the proper skill set around
engineering content and design, but who can also communicate
effectively with team members and clients.

"Both as an engineer and as a parent,” English says,
“I know that a great way to open doors to future careers in
engineering is by having kids experience and understand what
engineers do on a daily basis.”

At another table, Yara and Eli have been working diligently to
attach their wheels to the body of their car. With great
anticipation and excitement, they wind up their rubber band and put
the car down on the floor. The front wheels spin in place but there
is no motion.

“When we wind it up it doesn’t go anywhere,”
Yara says disappointedly.

Aldrich asks Yara and Eli to put their heads near the floor and
look to see which part of their car is touching the floor.

“Where is the bottom of your car?” she asks.

“Oh, on the floor,” they say.

“Why don’t you want it rubbing on the floor?”
Aldrich asks them. “What force is working on the bottom of
your car?”

“Friction,” both answer, almost together.

The children work diligently to solve the problem, but then
encounter another design issue. Rexford suggests they go out
to the testing area to observe how some of their fellow engineers
have designed their cars. As the children watch the cars, Rexford
wonders whether they have ever seen cars at home get stuck in the
winter.

“The tires spin around and around, but the car does not
move anywhere,” he says.

It’s a light bulb moment for the children.

“Tape! They have tape on their tires,” Yara says
after watching some of the other cars.

“The tape adds friction,” says Eli.

The two children quickly return to the materials table, find
some tape and add it to their tires.

As children work on their projects and teachers help them
explore the engineering design process, all are immersed in a rich
language environment that prompts them to question, explain and
critically examine: Why do you think that works? Why
doesn’t it work? What problem does that solve? Where
are you in the engineering design process right now?
Let’s think about that together. Did you check your
product against the requirements that your client gave you?

“This partnership is a real success story,” says
Lynn Shanahan, associate professor of literacy education in
UB’s Graduate School of Education, who worked closely with
Zlotek and Heritage Heights Principal Scott Wolf to establish the
partnership with the UB team.

“Few schools have opportunity to teach the engineering
design process at the elementary level,” Shanahan says. But
when Zlotek approached her about a collaboration involving inquiry,
Shanahan knew the UB team would jump at the chance. The
collaboration between the researchers at UB and the teachers at
Sweet Home was essential to understanding disciplinary literacies
and the development of the curricular activities that were
appropriate at the elementary level.